Prasad thought for a long moment before answering, leaning down to gaze at the iguana in it’s glass prison. Yes he’d had a family. A very long time ago. It wasn’t the sort of question most people asked of their personal slave, and he didn’t know how to respond to it, which was the only saving grace really. His master had asked a direct question. He’d have to answer him in some way. But as long as he struggled to understand what answer was accurate, it bought him time to truly consider it. In the most literal sense, no he did not have family any longer. They had died many hundreds of years ago now. There had been a time when he had tried to keep track of his line, but too much time had passed. There was no way to find them now. And whatever else they had done, he knew they had gone to a place he could never go. His soul would not go to Paradise.
“No, my family is gone,” she said simply, and it was true enough. He took a moment to assuage the turmoil such thoughts brought by tapping on the glass aquarium, knowing it would bother the lizard...no...girl inside and smiling a bit meanly at her. It was hardly his fault she was in such a predicament. In his experience, people rarely deserved the horrible things that befell them. He’d been the hand of unjustified fate enough times to know she probably hadn’t done a damn thing, but she was stuck this way now. But it wasn’t always true. So perhaps she deserved whatever punishment this was, despite what Marcus said.
“Did she tell you how it happened?” he asked in spite of himself, his curiosity overwhelming his usual desire to remain distant from his “master.” “Or what the terms are? What causes it? I get the impression she wasn’t a lizard when you brought her in, despite the obvious family resemblance in her current state.” He grinned mischievously over his shoulder at the larger man.